1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to computer systems, communications, and communication devices. More particularly, this invention is directed to methods and systems for a personal digital gateway that communicates with a linked communications device to automatically provide customized presentation, selection, and management of programs and/or data to the linked communications device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic communications has experienced explosive growth, and more growth is planned as access increases and communications devices improve. This explosive growth is revolutionizing how people manage data shared among numerous communications devices. Each week, hundreds, if not thousands or more, of electronic documents, facsimiles, emails, and other proprietary data may be generated by or provided to a user (e.g., owner or operator of the communications device). The user may desire to have this data available on multiple communications devices, such as, for example, the user's personal digital assistant (PDA), the user's home personal computer (PC), the user's office PC, and the user's wireless telephone. Typically, each of these communications devices is customized in terms of software, hardware, and network configuration. For example, the wireless telephone and the home PC have different software applications, data processing, storage, management, and communications systems.
One of the biggest barriers to managing multiple communications devices is creating, accessing, and maintaining up-to-date personalized information. This personalized information can be exchanged or otherwise shared with each of the user's communications devices. For example, if the user wants to share contact information (e.g., name, phone numbers, addresses, etc.) between the wireless telephone and the home PC, then the user typically must enter this information twice—once on the wireless telephone and once on the home PC. If the user updates the contact information for his/her home PC, then this updated information is not communicated to the wireless phone and the user must update the wireless phone separately. Another barrier is providing this up-to-date personalized information in a standardized or otherwise compatible data format, depending on functionality limitations of the communications device, so that each of the communications devices has efficient and effective access to the information. For example, conventional wireless phones have limited functionality compared with the home PC. Typically, wireless telephones provide limited contact information, such as a telephone listing by name rather than full address books and/or calendars. Additionally, conventional wireless telephones are unable to run application/software packages and may have limited capabilities for transmitting, receiving, and displaying video data.
In addition to the above challenges, some communications devices of the user also set forth a variety of login identifications and/or passwords in order to provide privacy, authorization, and/or security for the communications device and/or the connected communications networks. For example, the wireless phone may have a security identifier that activates service over the wireless network. In addition, the wireless phone may have another security identifier that accesses a voice messaging service. Typically, these identifiers are created and managed by the user. However, in some instance, such as accessing the user's office PC, the user may not have control over creating and managing identifiers and passwords.
The above discussion illustrates how the sharing of up-to-date personalized information among various communications devices is creating a new foundation for a virtual personalized network setting. With this emerging virtual personalized network setting, what is needed is a personalized digital gateway that builds communications infrastructures to support and capitalize on the different communications devices of the user to provide up-to-date personalized information. Accordingly, personal digital gateway (PDG) information systems and components are needed that enable multiple communications devices to share, transfer, and/or access standardized or otherwise compatible up-to-date personalized information. Additionally, personal digital gateway systems and components are needed to customize presentation of the standardized up-to-date personalized information based on the functionalities of each communications device. Further, a need exists to improve notification, access, and management of the personalized information without investing millions of dollars in computer equipment, in networking infrastructures, in maintenance, and in training while also complying with security, authentication, and/or privacy requirements.